The rolling list of lost items

As anyone who has spent a day with me probably knows, I am hopeless at losing stuff. I am the sort of person who regularly locks her keys in her car, leaves her wallet at the check-out-counter, drops cell phones out of her back pocket into the toilet, forgets nice cameras on train rides, etc. My nickname in high school was "spaz" because of my record of doing stupid stuff (losing things, falling into creeks, forgetting it was a weekday, tripping down stairs...). During my first year of grad school at USC, there was a poster in the building bathroom taped to the inside door of the women's restroom that read:

Carie:

do you have

-your keys,

-your wallet
-your glasses

-your phone?

I have often thought that the only solution to this problem would be to get a bunch of those big ring piercings all over my body and just clip things (my phone, my wallet, my keys, my computer, my camera, etc.) to them. But I don't even have pierced ears, and that sounds painful.

But in addition to my incredible knack for losing things, I also have had incredible luck with recovering lost items. Like the time the camera that was left on the train was turned into German lost-and-found and mailed to me. Or the time my male professor emailed me telling me he had found my phone in the womens' restroom (he got strange looks for that one). One of my most memorable stories is the time I thought I left my cell phone at a gas station in god-knows-where Wyoming, and after two hours of driving on bumpy dirt roads and going out sample collecting, the phone was found on the hood of the van, and on the phone was a butterfly, peacefully sunning itself.

So, for everyone's amusement, here is the current updated list of things I've lost so far on this trip.

Item	Lost	Recovered
BECU debit card	Sep 4, Viña del Mar bus terminal?	Sep 18, replacement arrived by FedEx (2 weeks "emergency express"...right. But finally! Hooray!!
Snowboard boots	Sep 6, left on Las Leñas ski bus	Sep 6, bus driver found them and chased me down
One liner glove (brand new REI gloves! Aaargh!)	Sep 12, mountains around Pozo de las Ánimas	Need to purchase new gloves before my hands freeze off
One pair of quick-dry anti-microbial ExOfficio travel panties	Sep 19, Malargüe, Argentina: Melted while trying to dry them on the heater after a sink-washing.	Need more! SOS! Somebody!
Quick dry ultralight camping towel	Sep 20, left to dry and forgotten on the balcony of the Princessa Insolente Hostel, Santiago	Still searching for a replacement...so far no luck.
1L Nalgene water bottle w/ a rad sticker collection	Sep 27, left behind in Las Trancas (the BackChillan cabin)	Think I can sweet talk the guys into mailing it to me?